Critical Essay by Richard Challener

SOURCE: “William Jennings Bryan (1913-1915),” in An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century, edited by Norman A. Graebner, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1961, pp. 79-100.

In the following essay, Challener examines and evaluates Bryan's years as Secretary of State in the Wilson administration.

The passage of time has been unkind to the reputation of William Jennings Bryan. Few can call to mind the image of the young crusader who voiced the protest of the prairie farmer and who thrilled huge audiences with his impassioned demands for social justice; instead, there has emerged the picture of a stubborn, often obtuse defender of outmoded ideas, a man who failed to keep abreast of his times and who, characteristically, passed from the American scene while trying to prevent the teaching of the principles of evolution. Indeed...